A City Slicker Tries Farming

The simple life turns out to be much harder than expected for these city folks.

By Sam Moore
Published on June 4, 2024
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Illustration from Farm Life magazine
Harness a horse? How hard can it be?

In the May 1927 issue of Farm Life magazine appeared a humorous story by Charles Doughton, about a rich city man and his family who decided to try the simple life as farmers. What follows is a highly edited account of their adventures.

I never farmed but once, and if the fates are kind, never will again! I’m a city man from the asphalt up and I inherited a successful company upon the death of my father. I’m the president of the company, which has something to do with mining, but I let the board of directors attend to the details of running it, as they weary me.

Last winter, the wife and kids began talking of spending a summer “getting back to nature,” and all that stuff that women think of, and, in a weak moment, I told them okay. So the wife rented a small farm, and we were going there to be regular farmers for the summer. She had even engaged a hired man named Boggs to start things going before we got there.

When we got to the farm, the women were delighted with everything. Mrs. Boggs had fixed dinner and, while it was a good meal, everything was just set on the table, there was no one to pass anything, and we had to do all that ourselves. When we went to bed, it was so quiet you could hear your hair grow, and I couldn’t sleep a wink.

Mrs. Boggs agreed to stay on as cook, because my wife was afraid she’d forgotten everything she ever knew about it, and Lila, my daughter, couldn’t do anything but make fudge.

After a few days, things seemed to be running pretty smooth, when my wife took a notion to raise chickens. There were a few around the place, and she hoped to soon have a lot of little chicks. She fixed up some nice nest boxes, lined with tinsel and crepe paper and decorated with ribbons, nice enough for any hen. She put eggs into the nests and chose several of the largest and healthiest looking chickens to mother them. Well, those birds wouldn’t have anything to do with the thing, they stood on the eggs and made omelets of them, then strutted off, with an offended “cock-a-doodle-doo.”

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